April 10, 2018

The Last Ship arrives in Liverpool after three very successful weeks in Newcastle, where it began its UK tour last month. It’s a musical about a North East shipbuilding town facing an uncertain future, with a score by Wallsend-born Sting, so perhaps it’s no great surprise it proved such a hit on Tyneside. But its popularity with audiences was well deserved, and if there’s any justice it will be replicated around the rest of the country, as it certainly was here in Liverpool last night. This is a stupendous show...

March 28, 2018

A range of merchandise for The Last Ship is available both in theatres and online at The Theatre Shop. There are a couple of t-shirts, a hoodie, tote bag, poster etc. with a few additional items to come.

March 23, 2018

It has been something of a rough journey for Sting’s debut musical The Last Ship to end up docked on Tyneside, its spiritual home – including a truncated Broadway run and a last-minute change of cast with the departure of local legend Jimmy Nail, who was in the New York production..

March 23, 2018

Northern Stage are having a cracking year in 2018 and with The Last Ship, the Newcastle theatre realises its potential. Not known for musicals, the venue has taken the music of Sting and crafted a show that hits the spot. It is a real call to arms and The Last Ship celebrates the communities that lived in the shadow of the ships that were built along our coastline..

March 23, 2018

Perhaps it is not as odd as it seems. For a start, they both have “ridiculous names”, says Sting, “which people no longer question”. Shaggy and Sting were born Orville and Gordon. Their nicknames arrived in their youth: Sting’s, from a black-and-yellow striped jumper he wore in his days as bass player in a Newcastle jazz band – even his mother called him Sting. Shaggy’s, from his resemblance, at the age of 12 when he was living in Jamaica, to the character from Scooby-Doo – his mother calls him Richard...

March 23, 2018

59 Productions' designs are superlative, they intensify the drama and make us believe even when the action is less involving. The great width of the stage is filled with girders, gantries and iron staircases. Behind these, cranes lurch into movement against a troubled sky or the ship appears in magical perspective. Projections – at times constantly changing – gives us everything from a television news report to a stained glass window.

March 23, 2018

With rousing anthems and purposeful politics, this tale of Thatcher-era shipbuilders launches anew in home waters. Having bombed on Broadway, this musical by Sting about the shipbuilding industry is being revived on its native soil with a new book by its director, Lorne Campbell. The only mystery is why the show ever premiered in the US in the first place: it is a deeply British musical that champions Tyneside life and that leaves you in no doubt where it stands on Thatcherite economics. It was received, quite rightly, with full-throated acclaim by its Newcastle audience...